60 mutants to keep track of, one of which is blue naked Jennifer Lawrence? I don’t know if my old brain can handle this.

X-Men

Take everything I just said about Spider-Man and multiply it. X-Men comics are even more focused on drama and relationships, and require the introduction of even more characters (although in the case of the X-Men, it’s team members, not villains). To date all the X-Men movies have been, at best, barely coherent. The plot of most of the movies can be boiled down to “here’s a new character, here’s a new character, here’s 10 more characters, oh wait, somebody died, final confusing action scene, the end.” And now they’re adding time travel and multiple versions of some of the characters to the mix? I know a lot of folks are looking forward to X-Men: Days of Future Past, but I’m kind of dreading it.

If there was ever a comic book franchise crying out to be an ensemble TV drama, X-Men is it. And hey, given how often the X-Men line-up changes, they could constantly refresh the cast ala ER and keep the show on the air for 15-years.

Whenever the tent pole movie system collapses in the next 10-20 years (according to Lucas and Spielberg), this is exactly where things will go. TV studios will be able to get the comic book rights on the cheap and start telling serial stories like comic book and super heroes deserve. Superhero movies don’t work as often as they should because it takes world building and months of story in weekly editions to build up conflicts. To cram all that into one 2.5 hour movie every 3 years is not ideal and why there’s 4 or 5 villains in some movies.

Once the movie studios get burned to a crisp and return to telling simpler stories in 90-120 min and quit trying to cram long form story telling in blockbuster movies, then I would expect a lot of super hero shows with familiar properties like the X Men, Spiderman, Batman, Wonder Woman

You mean the “Lucas” that runs an illegally controlled Empire that was part of the Silicon Valley Wage Fixing Cartel and recent Court Case?
The Spielberg who hasn’t directed but one decent except the Color Purple since Marcus Welby, M.D. in 1970?

Yeah. No, I’ll wait until somebody with more class or ability has something to say about Hollywood’s future and the future of moves.

I don’t know if an ongoing series for Punisher could work, but then again I know nothing of the comic universe and its characters. For now, as a fan of just the films (never read a single issue), I think a mini series of 6-12 episodes, released on HBO (more room to breathe in terms of violence, nudity, sex, and profanity), and see if it’s a hit first.

Nah, he’s exactly right. There is so much Punisher out there, they could make an incredible series out of it. The Punisher comics I used to read were mostly only Castle and Micro, so they’d have to add some kind of … I dunno, good cop chasing him that he refuses to kill or something, and probably a romantic interest because television.

Still. It’s 2014. It would have to be made pretty stupidly well to work, because there are times Punisher has done some really confusing stuff that would have been better handled with a sniper rifle and some small scale explosives.

@Mechakisc Allowing the Punisher to be the Punisher is the same suspension of disbelief required in nearly all vigilante stories. They “hero” would most certainly be dead almost immediately after just a few real world encounters. I think there’s a reason Omar Little didn’t make it outta the game.

I’d like to throw in Ghost Rider. It would, in a strange way, resemble the Bixby “Hulk” series, much the way the comics used to. Johnny Blaze going down a highway, dealing with something different in each town. It would resemble Supernatural, if one of them had a flaming skull and was in to chicks.

I want those to be the taglines. Especially the motherfucking shark. Especially if they swipe one of the numerous shark-based villains from other comics and give one to Ghost Rider and he insists on riding him piggyback.

Also with X-Men you can pitch it to Nickelodeon or Disney and have them do a TV Series based upon that X-Men College Comic series. Also maybe Joss Whedon could do Birds Of Prey. (That seems like a Whedonesque TV Series.)

I am a very high level TV executive. I’d like to discuss your pitch in my huge business offices. How do you feel about the character being shirtless every 12 minutes? Just stop by and we’ll spitball some ideas while we sip upon expensive liquors.

I always thought Badger would make a kick-ass series. Action, severe split-personality disorder, 5th century magic practicing Druid sidekick (or sorts), hot doctor/fighter wife, occasional demon battles, Badass the Demon Hunter, etc. With some hits and misses, the series was good when it was serious as well as absurd (speaking of a particular issue in which Badger meets Elvis, and teams up with Bruce Lee to take out a drug kingpin Colonel Sanders).

Do a season, then kick off the 2nd with the Badger Goes Berserk mini-series story.

New Universe’s “Justice” would be pretty cool too – I’m thinking of the 80s book, I haven’t read the reboot.

Even Captain America…as great as Chris Evans is on the big screen in the role….Cap’s WWII history deserves more than a montage before the big face off with the red skull. A Band of Brothers inspired series could touch on real WWII nazi villains. There could be seasons dealing with Zola, Zemo, Red Skull, Sleeper robots, the Invaders….

I think Cap is probably better suited to movies — he’s got that big pulpy adventure thing going on that’s well suited to movies. More to the point, I’m not sure if I care about his character enough to watch him every week.

I think we’re getting to the point where even TV CGI looks okay. Obviously it wouldn’t look as good as the Amazing Spider-Man movies, but if it at least looked as good as the Raimi movies, I’d be fine with that.

I strongly suggest listening to the How Did This Get Made podcast where they discuss Punisher War Zone with the director and Patton Oswalt. While not a perfect movie, I think they point out that it’s a pretty good adaptation of the comics. Or you could go the Tom Jane short film route with #dirtylaundry.